Classic Poem

Farewell! Farewell!
Like the tolling of a bell,
Sounding forth some funeral knell,—
Tolling with a sad refrain,
Not for those who rest from pain,
But for those who still remain;
So sweet pathos would I borrow
From the loving lips of Sorrow,
Weaving in a plaintive minor with the cadence of my song,
For the souls that lonely languish,
For the hearts that break with anguish,
For the weak ones and the tempted, who must sin and suffer long;
For the hosts of living martyrs, groaning 'neath some ancient wrong;
For the cowards and the cravens, who in guilt alone are strong.
But from all Earth's woe and sadness,
All its folly and its madness,
I would never strive to save you, or avert the evil blow;
Even if I would, I could not,
Even if I could, I would not
Turn the course of Time's great river, in its grand, majestic flow;
Grapple with those mighty causes whose results I may not know:
All Life's sorrows end in blessing, as the future yet shall show.

From Life's overflowing beaker I have drained the bitter draught,
Changing to a maddening ichor in my being as I quaffed.
I have felt the hot blood rushing o'er its red and rameous path,
Like the molten lava, gushing in its wild, volcanic wrath;
Like a bubbling, boiling Geyser, in the regions of the pole;
Like a Scylla or Charybdis, threatening to ingulf my soul.
O, for all such fire-wrought natures let my rhythmic numbers toll!
Vulnerable, like Achilles, only in one fatal part,
I was wounded, by Life's arrows, in the head, but not the heart.
“Come up higher!” cried the angels;—and I hastened to depart.